Sometime around 2008-2009, while I was reading the New York Times, I came across an article on the country of Croatia.  At this point my knowledge of Croatia was limited: located on the Dalmatian Coast in the Balkans, part of the Roman empire in antiquity, formerly part of Yugoslavia, and site of a bloody war in the early to mid 1990’s.  As I read the article, I was impressed at the portrayal of the country, it looked amazing with warm weather, great beaches, amazing food and ancient forts and cities to visit.  I said to myself, “someday I’ll go there!”, and promptly filed all the info into the back of my mind. 

 Fast forward to early 2019, we were in the process of planning our next adventure, and my usual suggestion of “let’s go to Ireland,” fell on deaf ears.  And far play, it’s a joint holiday, not just mine, but since I could make suggestions, I did.  After a bit of discussion, we narrowed down our choices to Portugal, Spain, Malta, or Croatia.  After some further haggling it was either Croatia or Malta.  Each fit the requirements: warm, somewhere different than past trips, somewhere different then everybody else, and somewhere we might not be able to get to visit when we are older.  The final choice comes down to cost, number of flights, and length of any layover.  Ideally the cheaper the better and two or less flights with minimal layovers to get there.  Unfortunately, Malta will have to wait, the layover was a bit more then we’d wanted and so Croatia it was!

 Our trip started with a seven-hour overnight flight with Lufthansa (An amazing airline, with great food and free drinks!) from Boston to Frankfurt.  A four-hour layover here left us plenty of time for breakfast and a nap before boarding a Croatia Airlines flight (2 hours) to Dubrovnik airport, where we grabbed our luggage, and headed up the Adriatic coast to the city of Dubrovnik.

 If you are about the Mediterranean lifestyle of sun, swimming, fresh food, great wine, and then throw in some very low prices, add Croatia to your bucket list.  The daytime temperatures ranged from 82 - 91 F / 27-33 C, with nonstop sun and no humidity, while the nights were mid 70’s to low 80’s F, or low 20’s C

Our home for the next nine days was a second-floor apartment right in the heart of Lapad, a section of Dubrovnik.  Our apartment was close to EVERYTHING.  Sunset Beach and Uvala Lapad beach were a five minute walk in one direction, while the market (“Tommy”, weird name for a chain of grocery stores, right?) was five minutes in the opposite direction.  If we weren’t in the mood to cook, we had a 6 minute walk to a ton of bars and restaurants near the promenade.  If we wanted to get to another part of the city, the bus stop was one hundred meters or so away, we really couldn’t have chosen a better location.  The owner, Nikola, was super helpful, giving us tips, directions, and even arranging a tour for us when our original one was canceled.  He really seemed to go out of his way looking out for us, and all of his other guests.

The swimming options varied.  You had beaches but not the type (think Virginia Beach) which springs to mind when most of us think of a “beach”.  They were a bit smaller and some were sandy, and others had a light covering of smaller rocks, before the sand swallowed them up.  Other areas to swim had boulders to jump off with ladders to climb back up with small sections of poured concrete for sitting.  These places tended to be quieter, and they mostly looked out on the open Adriatic Sea as opposed to a sheltered bay.  Finally, every seaside town had its own marina protected by a cove or seawall.  Most of these had sections for swimming, designated by buoys either in-front of or behind the seawall.  No matter your choice of swimming area, they were all quite nice.  To me, it seemed like more people tended to swim here rather than just sit and tan.  The water was crystal clear, and the temperature ranged from 82 - 85 F / 27-29 C.  The bottom was easily visible even without a snorkel and mask (although we picked up a cheap set), and you could observe variety of fish, snails, crabs and sea urchins.

Any “Fresh” seafood you get at home is about as fresh as my trainers after a run.  Croatian seafood was right out of the ocean and I had it every which way, on pizza, grilled, in soup, and in salads, it rivaled only the seafood I had in the Azores.  The cheese was freshly made for the most part and not processed like it is here.  With olive groves, vineyards and small farms with figs and other fruits and veggies, scattered throughout the hills, essentially it was all organic and right from farm to plate.  I think the closest thing we had to “fast food” were french fries with some meals.  The wine we had with our dinners and from the market were probably some of the best I’d had in a while.  Most people tend to put on weight and spend a bunch of money while on holiday, but with all the healthy food and excellent exchange rate, we were in fine shape when we got home.

With nine days spent in Croatia, I could really fill up a few posts about the trip, but instead I will mention a few of my favourite parts in a subsequent post or two.